Carly Simon is suing Starbucks over an album she released via the coffee giant's short lived record company Hear Music. As much previously reported, for a short time Starbucks stepped up its music partnership programme by becoming a fully fledged record company, most notably releasing Paul McCartney's first album outside of his career long relationship with EMI. However, while still selling music through its stores, Starbucks scaled back its direct involvement in Hear Music in May 2008.
The scaling back coincided with the release of Simon's latest album, 'This Kind Of Love'. In her lawsuit she claims that, as a result of Starbucks' sudden shift in strategy, they failed to promote the album to the extent that they had originally promised, even, she claims, not stocking it in many stores. Later the coffee chain cut the price of the album which, the singer says, damaged her reputation. She also alleges that she never received her full advance payment from the coffee chain, an advance which was already significantly less than original promised when the coffee firm first approached the singer.
Although it is true Starbucks cut back its music ambitions around about the time the Simon album was released, the coffee chain refute the allegations it reneged on its promotional commitments to the singer as a result. They say they went above and beyond in promoting the album, and that sales were disappointing not because of a lack of an effort on their part, but because of a lukewarm consumer response to her Brazilian-influenced fourteen track long player.
They said in a statement yesterday: "Unfortunately, sales continued to lag as the title received tepid response from music consumers. Other retailers faced the same fate with this CD".
Should this case got to court I wonder if they'll centre on what marketing activity Starbucks did for the album, or on whether or not the albums was, indeed, "tepid".